On the words: Suffer with the gospel according to the power of God. With a comforting encouragement.
The Thirteenth Letter.
On the words: Suffer with the gospel according to the power of God. With a comforting encouragement.
Dearly beloved sister!
May Jesus speak: Peace be with you! If the prayer of a sinner were as prevailing with God as the prayer of a righteous man, you would long since have been delivered from your wretched self-inspection and unbelieving fearing. This joy, I trust, God will yet let you and me live to see.
What Paul writes to his timid Timothy (2 Timothy 1), that I too say to you: Suffer with the gospel, according to the power of God. The gospel without suffering belongs in heaven. Suffering without the gospel is what they have in hell. But the pilgrims on earth must accept neither without the other. Well then — settle yourself into the pilgrim-state! The gospel, and everything good in it, you shall have; but suffer with the gospel. If one would have and experience the gospel whole, one finds the Passion included in it. We have much within us and much outside us that is contrary to Jesus and His gospel, from which we are assaulted as by enemies. There is a whole kingdom of darkness there in revolt — evil past counting, all manner of self-hoods, temptations and provocations on every side; and the forces of unbelief belong to the hostile camp as well. And what, then, shall we do against so many mighty, cunning enemies? Answer: do nothing; but suffer, and do not let the gospel fall from your hand because the suffering comes — rather grasp it all the more, suffering and all. "Yes — if only I were not so poor and weak!" Listen! According to the power of God you are to measure the enemies and the sufferings — not according to your weakness. What can God not do, whose power will be mighty in weakness? So be, for all of that, as weak as a week-old child. Let God's power be your cradle; lie in it as unconcerned as when you first were of that natural age. Tell me: who cared for you then? Truly, he alone who still does it now so gladly. To him then give yourself over wholly; love him; and be assured that you then love Him rightly, and that you then do right good works, when you suffer the evil, from without and from within, with peace and trust. That God may give you this is the wish — with a hearty greeting also to your husband and dear sister N. — of
Your weak brother.
Mülheim, the 3rd of November 1740.
German
Der dreizehnte Brief.
Ueber die Worte: Leide dich mit dem Evangelio nach GOttes Kraft. Nebst einer tröstlichen Aufmunterung.
Vielgeliebte Schwester!
JEsus spreche: Friede sey mit dir! Wann das Gebet eines Sünders so vermögend bei GOtt wäre, als das Gebet eines Gerechten, dann wärest du längst von deinem leidigen Selbst-Besehen und unglaubigen Fürchten erlöset: Diese Freude, vertraue ich, wird GOtt dich und mich noch erleben lassen.
— Opening lines of the original German. The complete transcription of all 605 letters appears in the forthcoming Encounter Press critical edition; Brief 1 is shown in full as a sample.
German text: public domain (1773–75 first edition / 1845 Gesammelte Schriften).
Translator’s notes
What this letter is. To a sister trapped in "wretched self-inspection and unbelieving fearing," Tersteegen preaches a one-verse sermon: Paul's word to timid Timothy — suffer with the gospel according to the power of God (2 Timothy 1:8) — and the old print set the apostolic phrase in emphasized type at every one of its five returns, so the page itself keeps repeating the text. The opening is all gentleness: her deliverance is a joy "God will yet let you and me live to see." The letter's frame is one of Tersteegen's most quoted epigrams: "The gospel without suffering belongs in heaven. Suffering without the gospel is what they have in hell. But the pilgrims on earth must accept neither without the other." To have the gospel whole is to find "the Passion included in it" — for around the believer stands "a whole kingdom of darkness… and the forces of unbelief belong to the hostile camp as well."
Against so many enemies, the strategy is the letter's scandal and its comfort in three words: "do nothing; but suffer" — and do not drop the gospel because suffering comes; grasp it the tighter. To the objection he puts in her own mouth — "Yes, if only I were not so poor and weak!" — comes the reversal the whole letter exists for: measure the enemies by God's power, not by your weakness. "What can God not do, whose power will be mighty in weakness?" Then weakness itself is turned to good: "be, for all of that, as weak as a week-old child. Let God's power be your cradle; lie in it as unconcerned as when you first were of that natural age. Tell me: who cared for you then?" The sister who cannot stop inspecting herself is given, instead of an examination, a cradle — and the letter's last definition quietly dissolves her scruples: you love Him rightly, and do right good works, precisely "when you suffer the evil… with peace and trust."
A few words and echoes.
- Suffer with the gospel. 2 Timothy 1:8 — "be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God" — Luther's German ("Leide dich mit dem Evangelio") is the letter's refrain, emphasized in the old print at every return.
- Peace be with you. John 20:19 — the risen Lord's greeting, here asked of Him for her.
- Mighty in weakness. 2 Corinthians 12:9 — "my strength is made perfect in weakness."
- A week-old child. Wochen-Kind — the old word for a child in its first six weeks; weakness at its most absolute, and most safely cradled.
- Self-hoods. Eigenheiten — the many little properties of the self that fight for their life; the same eigen-family as the fifth letter's "self-part."
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdii-thiii-013 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.